Madeleine McCann: Yard's jail quiz for rapist over vanished girl

The parents of missing Madeleine McCann were marking her birthday today as it was claimed detectives have quizzed a convicted child rapist over her disappearance.

Kate McCann, 46, and Gerry, 45, were remembering their daughter with cake and presents at their home in Leicestershire on what is her 11th birthday, and the eighth since she vanished from a family holiday in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in 2007.

It comes as it emerged British criminal Anthony Woodhouse, 68, was quizzed for two hours by Scotland Yard detectives in his prison cell.

He spent more than 10 years hiding in Portugal after going on the run after raping a 14-year-old girl in Hertfordshire in 1998, and was jailed for 17 years in 2008 after giving himself up to the British embassy in Lisbon.

Detectives spoke to Woodhouse in March at Channings Wood jail in Devon about a cleaning business he ran in the Algarve, close to where Madeleine was snatched, prompting fellow inmates to chant at him: “Give her back”.